


Hunger

by reeei



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, mild depression, mild ocd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeei/pseuds/reeei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows that Jim eats a ton. But Bones sees something different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for my Captain and go-to beta [Ashley](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lovethecoat51) for her suggestions and encouragement!

Jim is constantly putting stuff into his mouth.

Whether it’s a bag of crackers or a bar of chocolate, there’s always something.

Leonard is quite amused by his findings.

Jim gives people the impression that he eats a lot. But if you watch closely, you’d realize that the amount of food he eats on every meal is pretty normal for a man in his early twenties. What’s not normal is how often he eats between meals.

It’s like he can’t stand not chewing and swallowing at any given moment.

Leonard is concerned about this but he keeps his opinions to himself. It does take a lot of self control though.

 

One winter night, he wakes up to the sound of his roommate going through their kitchen cabinets in the middle of the night.

"For the love of God, Jim. What are you doing?" He shouts from his room. "Don’t you have that super early gym class in the morning?"

The sound in the kitchen stops. A few seconds later, Jim sticks his head into Leonard’s room. “Hey, Bones. So sorry that I woke you up. Just looking for something to eat. I’m starving.”

Leonard blinks, “Starving? You said you were too full to walk home and wanted me to drag you into a cab like two hours ago!”

"I know, I know. But you know me, I get hungry easily." Jim winks and goes back to the kitchen.

Leonard is barely asleep anyway. He gets up and follows Jim into the kitchen. “I don’t think we have any snacks. The gang cleaned everything out yesterday.”

"Huh. We’re out of milk and OJ. I can’t even find instant noodles. I thought we still got some left." Jim closes a cabinet door and stands up. "I’m gonna get something from the convenient store. You need anything?"

"No. Wait, Jim. Are you really that hungry? It’s not healthy to eat at this hour, you know." Leonard had to ask.

"I…yeah, I told you. I’m starving." Jim looks at him confusedly.

Leonard takes a deep breath and swallowed his question down. ”Okay.”

He sleeps on the question.

Leonard is pretty sure Jim's physically fine that he doesn't need to eat all the time. So it's psychological then. In that case, he decides to wait.

 

He waits two years.

 

Five months later, in a rainy afternoon, Leonard doesn't have classes and Jim skips his to finish a paper. Jim gets up from the computer every twenty minutes or so and goes into the kitchen. Leonard thinks to himself, maybe Jim needs to eat when he's thinking hard.

Another 8 months passes, it's the coldest winter in San Francisco history (according to a very amateur meteorologist/historian James T. Kirk). Leonard is heading out to the hospital for his day shift. Which doesn't start in another three hours but he has a nasty case that he had to check in early. He drags himself out of bed at 2 AM, went straight into the bathroom. When he came out feeling like a human being, he spotted something moving in the dim living room and started panicking. 5 seconds later he recognizes that "thing". Leonard says bye to a Jim that's currently devouring a bowl of cereal and heads out. He doesn't have time or energy to say anything. Or so he tells himself when he bites his tongue.

 

In the last few months of them being roommate, Leonard caught Jim's late night snack hunting again. This time, he just can't let it slide anymore.

"Jim, I'm serious. If you keep eating like this, you're gonna have diabetes or kidney failure or all that kind of things when you're thirty. On top of that, you never let your stomach rest. It's not good for you." Leonard warns him.

"You're not my mother, Bones. This is my body, I can do whatever I want with it. Back off." Jim growls.

To be honest, Leonard is a little frightened and stunned by how defensive Jim is. But he's not that easy to scare off.

"I'm not saying that you can't eat snacks. You could--" He tries to explain.

"I said, BACK OFF. It's none of your business." Jim refuses to listen.

"Jesus Christ, Jim. I'm simply suggesting you to eat a little healthier. What the hell is going on with you?"

"I can't! Okay? I have to." Jim exclaims.

"Or what, Jim? It's not like you need to eat constantly because you have a stomach problem or something like that. What is making you act like this? It's gotta be something on your mind." Leonard frustratingly asks.

"You figured that out, huh? Your psychology professor would be so proud." Jim sneers.

"Jim," Leonard takes a deep breath, and another one. "Talk to me, kid. What's going on? I just want to know. Please, Jim."

Jim freezes at Leonard's sudden change of attitude.

"It's nothing." He simply says.

"I'm not five years old, Jim. It's obviously not nothing. I've been living with you for almost two years for crying out loud. Why can't you? You can tell me, Jim." Leonard patiently pleas.

It takes Jim quite a while to start talking again. And when he starts, he talks slower than usual, as if choosing every word that's coming out of his mouth.

"When I was fourteen, my mom decided to send me to a boarding school because she was going to be in Antarctica for six months. I was excited. A lot of people asked me if I was nervous. I said no and I meant it. I wasn't nervous. I was happy that I could finally be by myself."

Leonard nods. Jim continues.

"Sam was already going to another boarding school in the States. My mom's decision to send me there was last minute, so I couldn't go to Sam's school. She went through a list of prestigious boarding schools that were still taking students and found one in Switzerland. I was so excited. I looked up everything I could find about it, thinking about what life would be like over there. I knew that for the first time in my life, I was gonna be on my own for more than two months. But I didn't really know what it meant. I had traveled on my own and even stayed in a host family for two months before, and I've never once been homesick. I could go on weeks without seeing or calling my mom. That's why I wasn't worried or nervous. And my mom seemed relived that I was okay with the whole thing."

Jim took a deep breath, his expression calm but there are tension pooling in his eyes.

"Mom had to leave for her job in July, Sam was on a trip, Uncle Frank was flying four days a week that summer. Mom had to find someone to take care of me before the school starts. She contacted the school and they provided a list of host families I could stay. Mom and I flew there. She paid for six weeks's stay and left."

Leonard notices Jim's fists clenching, but he doesn't dare to do anything. Jim looks like he's gonna break into pieces if anyone touches him right now.

Jim is silent for a minute before he starts again. "The host family was fine. They're like a professional host home for kids to stay. There were three more kids there, two of them were older, one of them was my age. But there were these little things that unsettled me."

He stopped for another minute. Leonard is so tempted to hold his hands.

"I thought I was a pretty independent kid for my age before that summer. What I didn't realized was that it was a delusion forming on how much my family took care of me. I felt safe on my own because I knew I always had a place to go back to after my pathetically short adventures.

"On the first day I arrived, the host family asked me to buy my own toothpaste, shampoo, things like that. I was a little surprised but didn't think too much of it. And then when the language school the other kid and I both signed up started, I asked them if they could drive us to school. They told us to take the bus, couldn't even drive us to the bus stop that's about a mile from the house. The school was in the city, it was a 15-minute drive but a 40-minute bus ride. I still didn't think too much of it. Although disappointed because I always had a ride when I was back home, whether it was Mom or Frank or even Sam after he got his license.

"My fifth day there, I found out the host mom drove the older kids everywhere, shopping, visiting friends, anything. Whether it's a two minute drive or a two hour drive, once a week or twice a day. I didn't know why she treated us differently. Hell, I still don't know why exactly." Jim wryly smiled.

Leonard wants to find those people and punch some sense into them.

"I started getting homesick. It was minor at first but it escalated pretty quickly. On the third weekend during our weekly phone call, I burst out crying the second I heard Mom's voice."

Jim pauses again, trying to swallow. Leonard can't stand doing nothing anymore. He reaches for Jim's fist and squeezes. Jim forces a smile at him, looks down again and continues.

"I lost weight. There were dinners I couldn't finish because I had these sudden rush of sadness which made me unable to swallow. I'd excuse myself and went to my room to lie down, the room I shared with the other kid. I don't think he knew, but I could hear him sobbing at night and it infuriated me for some reason."

Leonard feels like someone is ripping his heart out.

"I acted normal at the school. People were nice and friendly. I could forget about being homesick for eight hours everyday. The last week there, anything could be a trigger for me to start crying. I knew Mom was worried sick after the first time I cried on the phone. I've always been a stubborn child, I rarely cried. It freaked her out to know that I was in such a bad state i couldn't even pretend not to be homesick. But there was nothing she could do. She was stuck, Uncle Frank was stuck.

"I think one of the main reasons why I was so upset is that I couldn't see an end to the misery. If staying in a host family was this bad, how was I supposed to survive in a new school for six months or even a year if my mom gets caught up again and can't take me back home?" Jim chokes a little.

"What happened after you left in August?" Leonard whispers, encouraging Jim to keep going.

"It turned out that I was a pessimist." His lips quirks up a little. "The boarding school was great. The teachers there were experienced, they knew how to take care of kids who leave their parents for the first time. The kids there were great, too. I think that's the teachers and staff's influence." Jim smiles, a little more effortlessly this time. "I found home. I couldn't find home in a big house the six weeks before, but I found home six weeks later in a school. They picked me up, Bones."

Jim smiles, this time genuine and bright despite the gray edges.

Leonard squeezes his fist again.

"I was okay again. But the scar is there." Jim looks into Leonard's eyes, searching.

Leonard found his voice, "And that's why you eat all the time."

Jim silently nods.

Leonard starts again, "At first, you dind't want to feel like you're losing appetite, and then it became a habit."

Jim is not meeting his eyes.

"Hey, Jim. I understand." Leonard picks up both of Jim's hands and uncurl them, then he gently rubs his arms. "I understand now. I'm not going to tell you not to eat snacks, but could you eat something with less sugar or salt or fat?" Leonard tries to say it in a lighter tone. But Jim's still staring at his own hands.

He tries again.

"Or you could talk to me. Anytime. As long as I'm not in the middle of a surgery, I'll always have time to talk to you, whenever you need."

Jim slowly lifts his gaze up. "Okay."

"Alright, then." Leonard leans forward to kiss the top of Jim's head.

They both freezes.

"Uh..."Leonard searches desperately for an excuse.

"Well, that came out of nowhere." Jim is suddenly back being his usual self, teasing.

Leonard can hear his own blood rushing upwards.

Jim holds up Leonard's hands and kiss each of them once. "Thank you, Bones. I'm sorry that I'm a mess and had you worried."

"I'm not any better, Jim. Nobody is. We're all our own little mess. And now I've got your little mess to accompany mine." He doesn't want to let go of Jim's hands.

Apparently Jim doesn't, either.

"I'm glad I've got your little mess next to mine, Bones." Jim beams.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I very loosely based Jim's boarding school on this school: http://www.brillantmont.ch/   
> And Leonard's medical school is UCSF, Jim is either Golden Gates or USF, I couldn't decide. XD


End file.
